


Gone

by JaineyBaby



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M, Mission Fic, Q knows something's up, Schrodinger - Freeform, Separations, absent Bond, but can't be sure what, distressed q, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:48:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7917463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaineyBaby/pseuds/JaineyBaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short little fic I babbled out one morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timetospy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetospy/gifts).



It was so sudden that not even Q had a chance to see it coming. One morning, James was there, across from him at their breakfast table. The next, he was gone in a puff of smoke. The only explanation offered to him was from M, a gruff few words on national security and the importance of personal sacrifice. Q wanted to deck him.

James had been cut off so suddenly from everyone at MI6, Q had to check and make sure he hadn’t been scrubbed completely from the logs. The Branch liked to call missions like this “Schrodinger Quests.” It meant they wouldn’t see or hear from James until he was either successful or dead.  
Q tried to understand, tried to accept Mallory’s stiff upper lip nonsense of self sacrifice. For the first three months, he did, sorta. After five months though, he started feeling these odd... pangs. At first he had just chalked it up to stress. How ever, one day walking into work, Q had this off kilter kind of thumping behind his sternum that left him breathless. Maybe he was finally losing his mind. He hadn’t stopped looking for James in the 5 months that M had sent him away to only God knew where.

Two more months go on and James was still missing and M had become a stonewall to all of Q’s inquiries. The pangs he had felt a little over two months ago had become a weekly if not daily experience. Q wanted to think that they meant something, that somehow, they were linked to James, but that was absolute madness. The thought, though once lodged in his mind, caused him to seek out the odd pangs he got in his chest. He would go to work, exhaust every resource, lead, and connection he had looking for James from California to Mongolia to Austria to New Zealand. Every corner of the globe, he searched and hacked and time after time after time, he hit roadblock after roadblock, all culminating in orders directly from M that the searching had to stop if he wanted James to ever make it home safely. The order sat hard and cold and sharp in the pit of his stomach.

It had been eight months when Q finally wondered if he needed to report his odd feelings to Mallory or at least try to talk to someone about it. He was sitting in the park where the pangs tended to happen most when he could have sworn the man that had just walked by… the line of his shoulders, the swing of his instep. He would have known that walk anywhere. But James wasn’t anywhere, he was gone, a ghost, an illusion for the British Government to turn out into the wind on a whim. Still, He had to know. Q was off the park bench in a flash and making his way across the green when his phone buzzed in his back pocket.

**From Unknown Number: Don't. Be Safe**

Q nearly dropped his phone and all the air rushed from his lungs.

SoHo went up in a concussion of chaos and Q could only think of James, though briefly. He soon found himself trapped in the Q Branch bunker, running damage control as London teetered dangerously towards absolute mayhem. After 79 hours of traffic control, digging through hours and hours of CCTV footage and barely scraping together the final touches on the gear for a MI6 bomb squad, Q finally managed to crawl home.

Before he can even get through the door his chest begins to tighten and hum, the word was out his mouth before he could stop himself.

"James?" Q had been hoping against blind hope that James would have come back, even if all M could manage to update before all hell had broken loose across London was that the mission had been finished, though no status of 007 was available. Here in the dark of Q’s flat, their flat, something, someone sat too quietly in the flat and the had changed to allow the intrusion.

"Welcome home, darling." Eight months, three weeks and twelve hours, and Q found the shadow of James Bond filling up the door to their bedroom. "James......" Q dropped his bag and his arms were around James in a moment. James hissed in pain and Q pulled back, though his hands stayed firmly on James where he could.

"Sorry sorry.... are you? God, you're alive." Q leaned in, gently this time, and kissed James. It was soft but heated, and spoke of so much time lost and so much time to catch up on. First thing was first though.

Q dragged a battered and bruised but very much still alive James into their bed and laid him out over the sheets and duvet and climbed up beside him where Q could lay his head on James’ still beating heart, if only to remind himself that James was still here.

"You.... you were following me." Q finally said when he had managed to get words around the lump of emotions that otherwise occupied his throat.

James went quiet for a long time, sighing against the bruising in his ribs. ".... sometimes. I missed you."

"That was reckless, James. You could have been compromised." Q lifted his head to look James in the eye. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed the sound of his voice, even when he was trying for contrite. 

"I was." James deadpanned, carding a bloody knuckled hand through Q’s hair. He couldn’t even be bothered to care. There would be plenty of time later to shower.

"The text." Had Q been the reason James was nearly blown to bits? The thought was unsettling though quickly laid to rest.

"No... though thank you for not pulling up the CCTV. You would have been at risk too if they thought you knew where I was. M had me hunting down a mole in MI6."

"So you blew up SoHo." It was Q’s turn to deadpan.

"Simmons did that. I just made sure he was dead first." James rubbed soothing circles into Q’s back until he laid his head back down to rest on James’ chest.

"Thank you." murmured into the ruined fabric of his shirt.

"For?" James asked softly.

"Coming home...."


End file.
